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Andy

@ andrewrgross @slrpnk.net

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90
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776
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3 yr. ago

  • Moscow back at the table - and appearing to call the shots

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  • I mean no disrespect, but I think you need to exercise a much more critical lens. If only as an exercise in understanding other viewpoints, even if you think they're somehow incorrect.

    Biden didn't need to tear up treaties or threaten to invent new powers. He literally just had to obey US law.

    A law known as the Leahey law states very, very frankly that it is illegal -- completely against US law -- for any US agency to knowingly provide weapons which they believe will be used to commit human rights abuses or violate international law.

    Numerous whistleblowers in the state department -- Stacey Gilbert, Annelle Sheline, Josh Paul -- flagged the provision of weapons to Israel as a clear violation of the Leahy law. They repeatedly pointed out that internally, the State Department had clearly determined that weapons were routinely being used in a manner that made further deliveries a criminal act under US law. This happened in full public view. These three people (as well as others outside of the state department) resigned from the jobs they'd worked their whole lives for out of duty to the constitution to publicly disclose that Blinken and Biden were knowingly acting in direct violation of US criminal law. That's what makes this so frustrating. Biden had no excuse. Despite every claim to the contrary, his complicity in the war crimes in Gaza were conducted knowingly and deliberately. It was not passive, it required active, determined will to carry out. I think that based on numerous public testimonials from within his administration, frankly, the International Criminal Court had sufficient evidence to charge Biden with war crimes as they did Netanyahu and Galant. But obviously charging the US president is just way too hot a potato.

    Biden withheld a single item: 2000 lbs bombs. That was a purely symbolic gesture. That in no way limited Israel's ability to conduct the war. And that was on purpose. If it had, he wouldn't have done it.

    No one prevented him from withholding anything. I'm not sure what you think Republicans forced him to do, but that is the sole item that was withheld, and that restriction persisted until he left office.

    This is very, very painful stuff to digest. But I hope you can take a deep breath and at least sit with these facts for a moment. I think we should all do so out of respect for people like Gilbert, Sheline, and Paul who sacrificed their careers and reputations over these plain facts.

    https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/27/opinions/gaza-israel-resigning-state-department-sheline/index.html

  • Moscow back at the table - and appearing to call the shots

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  • I find it tragic the lack of strategic thinking or imagination that the national security world is capable of.

    If what you're saying is true, this is the best outcome. Biden did the best that one could do. This result is the result you get from implimenting the best possible strategic war planning of the strongest military in all of history.

    That's preposterous. If Biden, Blinken, and Austin sat down and applied the world's most formidable military power to simulating outcomes, among possible outcomes would certainly be these two:

    1. Trump wins, withdraws all support, and possibly begins sanctioning Ukraine or supplying weapons and intelligence to Putin. Zelinsky is killed and Ukraine comes fully under Russian control as a puppet state.
    2. Zelinsky agrees under pressure from Biden to negotiate a ceasefire in 2022. European leaders buy into a plan where they muster an overwhelming pressure campaign of limited duration to apply maximum pressure to Putin economically, and Biden warns that if Putin doesn't come to the table, all bets are off: Ukraine enters into a complete mutual defense pact with the US, and we begin building long range ballistic missile launchers on their border. OR; Ukraine agrees to surrender parts of Crimea and the Donbas in exchange for a complete withdrawal. Russia acquiesces. The war ends. Both sides are mad, but Trump comes into office more than two years after Russia has completely withdrawn, and Ukraine maintains a sizeable stockpile of American weapons, making a resumption of the conflict unappealing to Putin.

    I don't love outcome 2. But can we not pretend that this was not an option obviously available to Biden? An option he refused to even consider, despite the obviously enormous risks?

    Biden should've compelled an end to this by any means necessary before Trump took office. This was not an unforeseeable outcome, and they made no effort to even consider a response strategy.

  • Moscow back at the table - and appearing to call the shots

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  • I do not understand what your point is.

    What lesson did you take from the fiasco with Bibi? Biden claimed for months that he was going to get Bibi to agree to a ceasefire, and that it was close, and that the major obstacle was Hamas. And that they were working "tirelessly". And critics continued to insist that if he was serious, he needed to call up Bibi and say that he either accept a ceasefire or continue the war with rocks and sharp sticks, but that one way or another, Israel was about to stop firing US-made bullets at kids. And we were told that it doesn't work that way.

    And then Trump said that Bibi had to agree to Biden's ceasefire by January 20th or there'd be "hell to pay". Obviously not because of any humanitarian concern, but the point is that it was obvious all along: when the US is your essential supplier, the US can largely dictate exactly when you sit down at the negotiating table.

    Do you see some other lesson here besides that Biden was terrible at diplomacy, specifically because he never really wanted diplomacy?

  • Moscow back at the table - and appearing to call the shots

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  • No: because that assumes that Putin knew Trump was going to win.

    Both sides knew that the outcome of a coin flip election could make or break the terms of any future agreement, so Putin had no way to confidently know that a negotiation in 2025 would yield better terms than 2024.

    I mean, it's all hypothetical. Maybe Putin would rather go for broke, because he's insane and an evil asshole. Maybe he'd rather die blowing up the whole world than every accept a stalemate. But the theory that there was no room to negotiate is preposterous.

    I can definitely say in this moment, though, that Biden's refusal to even discuss negotiating a ceasefire was certainly a massive, costly mistake.

  • Moscow back at the table - and appearing to call the shots

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  • This is uncomfortable to say, but the US President has pretty much unconstrained authority to control the diplomatic matters of most of our allies. It's not unlimited, but it's obviously enough that the President of the United States can -- if they choose to -- simply dictate the end of a proxy war. I think this is really more obvious common sense than some fringe theory, but for any skeptics, Trump demonstrated this by commanding Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire deal he hated that Biden had ostensibly been trying to secure for about 7 months. The only difference between Biden's seven months and Trump's seven days was that Trump didn't ask. He just dictated what was going to happen.

    That is... horrible. It's not a basis for international relations or peace or sovereignty or respect for allies...

    But it is a frank demonstration that Biden could end the war in Ukraine at pretty much any time. Any month of the year that suited him, he could've picked up the phones and said it was time to strike a deal.

    He couldn't end it on the terms of his choosing! The terms would've sucked at all points, but negotiated settlement was always an option. And at any point if he'd done that, I can guarantee you that Ukraine would've gotten a better "deal" than what whatever is going to be imposed on them by Trump & Putin.

  • Moscow back at the table - and appearing to call the shots

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  • I'm sorry, but that seems like BS.

    I recall very clearly that Biden and Blinken maintained that they were refusing to open any negotiations with Russia. Maybe Russia would've refused. But I distinctly recall Biden taking a hard line stance, and anyone who suggested that he, Blinken, and Zelinsky accepting that they weren't likely to recover full territorial control being basically tarred and feathered as MAGA puppets.

    I just don't see the point. So many lives were spent to defend the country. Will it mean anything? We'll see.

  • Moscow back at the table - and appearing to call the shots

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  • This is really sad.

    Yet again, I can't help but look back towards Biden, who overall seems to have employed a practice of making no plans to safeguard any of his work against an election loss.

    I wish he would've negotiated an end to this while Ukraine still had some leverage. I feel like that's been treated as a shocking proposal for the last three years. But it always seemed obvious to me: if Trump wins, you could lose any and everything. He could simply withhold weapons and invite Russia to complete full conquest. He could issue Zelinsky an ultimatum to surrender and live in exile or face a firing squad in St. Petersburg.

    Ukraine will be lucky to simply survive these peace talks. Why they didn't negotiate this before the election seems to be another in an endless catalog of hubristic decisions.

  • Trump wants denuclearization talks with Russia and China, hopes for defense spending cuts

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  • Dude...

    As the expression goes, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

    Sure, he's a morally bankrupt wildly corrupt autocrat. But sometimes his enemies happen to be people I hated too.

    Why is he doing this? I can't say for certain, but my guess is that the military-industrial complex is on the wrong side of his kleptocracy. If they'd given the right bribes and flattery I'm sure he'd be saying that we gotta build more nukes, but apparently the CEOs of Raytheon et. al. didn't back the right horse. Plus, Trump likes the dictator club. He'd rather he, Putin, and Xi spent those dollars on presidential yaughts and focused on locking up dissidents than having an arms race among buddies.

    Even still... fundamentally he's fuckin right. It makes no sense for us to give billions and billions and billions to these companies so that we have the capacity to exterminate the human race a fifth time or something. Killing our whole species once is fuckin stupid to begin with, but planning on doing it multiple times is just advanced levels of stupid, and it's dangerous as hell to incentivize other countries to get into this red-queen race.

    Sure, his reasons are almost certainly evil as hell. But wherever they are... he's right that we should cut our military budget in half and negotiate disarmament.

  • Trump wants denuclearization talks with Russia and China, hopes for defense spending cuts

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  • Holy shit... I did not have that on my bingo card.

    Fine. Who knows if it'll happen, but when he's right, he's right. I don't think he'll ever be able to make me like his fascist ass, but if he cuts the military budget and sets up a new arms control treaty I'll give him the credit for it.

    We'll see.

  • Amazon’s killing a feature that let you download and backup Kindle books

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  • Yep. Not to gloat, but I never touched Amazon's ebook marketplace.

    My current e-reader is a second-hand Kindle that has a permanent message asking if I would just please connect to a WiFi network just one time just for a moment PLEEEEEASE.

    I get my books from libgen, Gutenberg, or Kobo, and keep them on my computer. They're organized in Calibre, and I transfer them over on a USB cable.

  • A far-right party is heading for its strongest result yet in Germany's election

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  • I think maybe I was unclear. I believe that much of the shift rightward is because migrants are an ideal boogyman. They're a natural target for nationalists, and liberals are largely apathetic.

    As late stage capitalism, automation, and outsourcing create greater and greater economic precarity, the far right has a perfect opportunity to enter the mainstream by giving voice to two of the biggest unspoken concerns that many politically disengaged voters relate to but often feel pressured not to talk about.

    The fascists say, 'your life is worse! And your neighborhood has changed ethnically! And we have a whole explanation for all your problems that the people in charge are trying to suppress! Lol at how aggressively they try and prevent us from saying these things!'

    And the dominant liberal order can't say 'It's not what it looks like! The rich are actually just taking advantage of you, and those migrants are just the earliest victims of climate change and greed!'

    The truth is that migrants don't drive down wages: criminalizing migrants does. And given enough time, you could be a migrant too. That's the thing I'd like more folks to know.

  • Hamas to release captives on Saturday after forcing Israel to increase aid deliveries

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  • Whew. I'm glad to hear this.

    I have to say that I'm highly, highly incredulous that this deal won't break down eventually. I don't currently see anyone who is interested in actually completing the deal who has sufficient leverage on Netanyahu to compel that outcome. But I hope they get as far through the deal as possible. I'd like as many hostages on both sides returned, and as much of a respite as possible.

    Still, it's so hard to find hope in this moment. They turned a genocide down from rolling boil to a simmer, but the military is still actively shooting people in both Gaza and the West Bank, and people in both are facing shortages of food and shelter.

    Under the best possible circumstances, if all Israeli hostages are released, I don't see any reason why Netanyahu wouldn't just resume the extermination campaign in Gaza.

  • A far-right party is heading for its strongest result yet in Germany's election

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  • First, I find it kind of irritating when someone attributes opinions to an undefined "they". Was this a thing Bernie Sanders said? Was this something started in a press release by the DSA? If you're talking about Twitter, might as well say 'I heard from the propaganda machine...'

    I'm left as heck, and I'm very aware that countries are moving right all over the world. It seems to be especially driven by migration. And I think folks need an affirmative message besides either 'we're ignoring your concerns and letting folks in' or 'fine, we'll lock the gates and kill the migrants. Please like us.'

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    ‘In a real sense, US democracy has died’: how Trump is emulating Hungary’s Orbán

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  • I don't mean to come at you in particular, but when I hear a phrase like "a tiny bit of democracy left", I can't help but think about the fact that there is so much unexercised democratic power available to citizens in the US, and the primary tool for disenfranchisement is just demoralizing and inactivating people.

    Let's just set aside all the people who just do not pay attention to politics and focus on folks in this thread. Within a thread of people who follow and react to international news, how many know who their county representative is? How many people vote in the primaries that determine who gets to run for their city council?

    I'm not blaming anyone. It's a ton of work. Until recently I didn't know these things. But if we're looking for a revival of democracy, we should all be working together to solidify power among the people who control our local cops and school boards and have authority over our state national guards and our state-level medical records, and regulate labor rights in our states and counties, and so on. This is really a key point at which we can either push fascism back to the fringes or let it actually end democracy.

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    ‘In a real sense, US democracy has died’: how Trump is emulating Hungary’s Orbán

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  • I feel like that term is ambiguous.

    Are you saying that gender ideology is crazy as in 'It's crazy that all these gender abolitionists are trying to force a complex ideology of new gender norms' or that it's crazy as in 'it's nuts that all these people think that any change in gender norms is part of a New World Order conspiracy to indoctrinate their kids and dissolve male authority in order to collapse civlization and turn everyone into livestock for the J*ws' ?

    It's not clear where in that fog you're pointing.

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    ‘In a real sense, US democracy has died’: how Trump is emulating Hungary’s Orbán

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  • I'm sorry, but I chafe at the notion that America was a democracy within the recent past and has ceased to be particularly in the last month.

    America was a weak democracy throughout its entire history; it has become weaker in the last generation, but still affords more democratic power -- even under a fascist leader in the process of attempting to further dismantle it -- than most citizens in the world enjoy today. A lot of people literally risk their lives for the political power that we often take for granted.

    We should absolutely be disturbed and angry about the loss of civic power. We should also avoid defeatism or doomerism, as there is still a lot of room for this to get better or worse depending on what each of us do. And, we should absolutely reject any framing that suggests that the oligarchy we had last year and every year of our lifetimes before that was some sacred ideal.

    America neither was a true democracy previously, nor has it ceased to be one at all. Ergo: democracy has not died.

  • Bill proposed to outlaw downloading Chinese AI models.

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  • Can you prevent someone from setting up local instances of Deepseek? It's open source. How would this define Chinese models?

  • Poll: What's the cross-over between fans of Trek and solarpunk?

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  • I generally agree, although the use of replicators is a point of departure.

    Solarpunk typically emphasizes degrowth and an end to scarcity that comes from a move away from endless consumption.

    It's not a criticism. Just an artistic difference responding to the 60s vs the new century.

  • Sam Altman says OpenAI has been on the 'wrong side of history' concerning open source

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  • I've found that the ChatGPT's greatest use to me has been as a rhetorical device.

    I've found myself using ChatGPT as a reference when dismissing a statement that is impressive in its diluted lack of sincerity or creative thinking.

    For instance, I read this article and thought how every answer literally sounds like the result you'd get if you asked the question to ChatGPT, prefacing each prompt with "Answer the following question as one would if they were executing an unrestrained profit-driven business strategy while seeking to appeal to investors and reassure critics without committing to any specific principle."

    He is somewhat exceptional in his ability to say completely transparent bullshit as well as his ability to take the most obvious, unsubtly selfish and evil business strategy at on literally every decision.

    What an assclown. He is a world-class assclown.

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    Sam Altman admits OpenAI has been on the wrong side of history with Open-Source

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  • This headline is nuts. "Admits"? As in "Divulges a concealed truth?"

    What a disgusting display of bad journalism to frame this thing most credible experts would disagree with as fact.